720p episodes

Khannie

Anyone know what's causing the 720p episodes to be delayed by a few days?

Last week it was Monday, this week Sunday.

User45701

ive been spotting them same day, satrday around 7 or 8 pm (GMT)

Khannie

The 720p version of S04E05 was definitely late. I couldn't find it _anywhere_. Episodes 1-4 were only a few hours behind the 350MB versions.

Overheal

Guessing the upload time differential. They would be quite a bit larger.

Khannie

Nah, generaly they're only a few hours behind. That's been the way now for all the shows I watch for donkeys. Even on my crappy upload connection, it shouldn't take any more than 8 hours to upload. The problem seems to be restricted to BSG too.

GinjaNinja

yup it's really getting annoying. the sd rips are bad and once you go 720p is very hard to go back.....
get the finger out american cusins

Overheal

Mmmm.... heading back to teh states for summer... gonna have some real interweb speeds. Torrentz ahoy!

User45701

Hmm i have to say i dont notice much of a difference between the 350mb and the 720p i mean id rather watch the new episode asap than wait for a tad better quality. The only 720p i have that i notice the difference is for season 2 episode 1. The rest are very simmilar to the 350mb.

I really notice the difference with 1080 though

Khannie

User45701 wrote: »

I really notice the difference with 1080 though

Something's wrong with your setup there then. 720p should look _substantially_ better than the 350M versions. Two big things are in its favour: Better codec and more bits. By comparison, the jump to 1080 shouldn't be that noticeable.

User45701

Khannie wrote: »

Something's wrong with your setup there then. 720p should look _substantially_ better than the 350M versions. Two big things are in its favour: Better codec and more bits. By comparison, the jump to 1080 shouldn't be that noticeable.

well i watch the 1080 on a hddvd player though hdmi, my grafix card just has DVI but still as i said one or two of the 720 i have like season 2 scatters and ressurection ship along with season 3's exodus part II, i only get new ones when i want to re-watch them and i do see a difference but i do notice a massive jump between the 1080 and 720

IamBeowulf

That's because you're comparing a compressed rip to a full-bitrate studio master (MKV vs. HD-DVD).

The thing to note is that if two files are 720p, or 1080p, or whatever, their quality still relies heavily on the bitrate and encoding. I read somewhere on boards that the 720p files are in fact upscaled SD files. Is this true? Can you upscale files like that?

User45701

ye i have two things that will upscale 350mb to 720 quality and i dont notice a big jump.

ianhobo

Khannie wrote: »

Two big things are in its favour: Better codec and more bits. By comparison, the jump to 1080 shouldn't be that noticeable.

And whats this "better" codec you speak of?
SD and HD rips are all mpeg4, just different profiles, therefore they use the same codec??

Is this true? Can you upscale files like that?

Any thing can be upscaled essentially. The new in-between pixels are worked out/guessed/interpolated. And will produce varying results depending on the algorithm used to generate the pixels

Khannie

ianhobo wrote: »

And whats this "better" codec you speak of?
SD and HD rips are all mpeg4, just different profiles, therefore they use the same codec??

X264. Better quality for the same file size v's xvid (which is what is used for the 350M versions).

Khannie

IamBeowulf wrote: »

I read somewhere on boards that the 720p files are in fact upscaled SD files. Is this true?

No. They're taken from the 1080i/p H264 MPEG transport streams (TS) and scaled down (you can actually get these streams on the internet sometimes. They weigh in at 4-8G depending but look absolutely savage). The same applies to the 350MB versions, they're scaled from the TS. I think the 350MB versions look really good given their size, but the quality difference v's the 1.1G 720p x264 encoded files is _enormous_ IMO.

Khannie

Sorry for the multi-posts....just doing it in case someone's following this in real-time....

I found an image that I'd seen before which very clearly shows the difference between the 350MB xvid and 1.1G x264 versions. It's taken from an episode of lost (no spoilers in the image).

Click me.

ianhobo

Khannie wrote: »

X264. Better quality for the same file size v's xvid (which is what is used for the 350M versions).

You must have misunderstood what I was asking and what I said, or I wasn't clear enough, it doesn't matter though.

x264 is mpeg4, same as xvid, divx, flash (sorrenson), quicktime, -> the same codec just a different profile.

xvid uses the simple profile of the mpeg4 standard - part 2, where as x264 is an implementation of the AVC profile of mpeg4 - part 10. But both are the MPEG4 codec

I guess its splitting hairs really, and whether you read ISO documents or MPEG released one.

I thought the original statement was suggesting that something other than MPEG4 was being used for the HD rips...

Khannie

ianhobo wrote: »

I guess its splitting hairs really

Just a tad.

IamBeowulf

Noticeable but not worth the waiting time IMHO I watch the 35ombs on a 47incher through the Xbox360 and from a decent distance, it looks quite clear, certainly better than Sky SD (I've heard rumours they use too little badwidth for their Irish Sky One broadcasts anyway...)

User45701

ok...

I admit I was wrong - I had a bad headache so I went to bed at 2 instead of watching BSG so when I woke up I saw the 720 version had been uped at 6.10 so I got that version and it really good.

Its definatly worth waiting the extra 3 hours

Khannie

Normal service has been resumed on the 720p front. \o/

User45701 wrote: »

Its definatly worth waiting the extra 3 hours

Couldn't agree more. Especially the space scenes. OMG THE DETAIL!!!

tramoredude

The PS3 wont play x264

And the conversion from x264 720p to DivX or XviD would probably lose a lot of the picture quality...

Time to buy a htpc I think

Overheal

I would, but i keep stuff, and my media drive is filling up. and i hate having to deal with twice as many dvds when i get around to backing things up.

Khannie

tramoredude wrote: »

The PS3 wont play x264

x264 is open source. I'm sure it's only a matter of time. edit: Just had a google; You can run linux on the PS3 and use VLC to watch X264 content.

tramoredude wrote: »

And the conversion from x264 720p to DivX or XviD would probably lose a lot of the picture quality...

Time to buy a htpc I think

You can get HR.HDTV ones which are around DVD quality (in between the 350M and 1.1G episodes). They're actually very good. A high bitrate conversion should work fairly well (e.g. if you converted it to a 2G xvid file).

Overheal wrote: »

when i get around to backing things up.

That day will never happen. You'll do like I did and buy lots of cheap hard drive space. If you're as geeky as your "location" suggests, you'll raid 5 it....juuuuust like me.